1. Matlab vs. Scilab
Rafael Brunner

2. What‘s going on? Few words about Scilab‘s origin
Introduction to Scilab: - linear algebra - programming
Parts of my term work: - sparse matrices - Savitzky-Golay filter - performance comparison
My own experiences

3. Scilab developed since 1990 at INRIA / ENPC (France) open source
free of charge
high quality toolboxes available - artificial network - serial port
similar to Matlab... yes, but...

4. Demo
Linear Algebra - basics (how to enter matrices etc.) - compute with matrices - solving systems of equations - hessenberg form - LU-, QR-decomposition - eigenvalues, -vectors - SVD

5. Programming
introduction / overview
example: poisson2d_kron

6. Overview (1) for var = expr, statement; ...; statement; end
while expression, statements; end
if expr then statements; elseif expr then statements; else statements; end

7. Overview (2)
select expr case expr1 then instructions case exprn then instructionsn [else instructions] end

8. Overview (3)
[lhs,rhs] = argn(0)
error
warning

9. Example (demo)
poisson2d_kron.m  poisson2d_kron.sci
mfile2sci

10. 2D-Poisson matrix

11. Sparse matrices
Three different algorithms to generate the 2D-Poisson matrix: - set the elements one by one - block wise - kronecker product

12. Performance comparison

13. Solving a system Ax=b in this case Ax = 1
pcg (preconditioned conjugate gradients method)
Scilab does not provide a pcg method  Scilin (IRISA)

14. Demo
Solving Ax=1 for n=100
2D-Poisson matrix generated by poisson2d_kron

15. Performance comparison

16. Savitzky-Golay Filter
measured data (slowly varying and corrupted by random noise)
reconstruction of the underlying smooth function

17. Savitzky-Golay Filter (DEMO)

18. My own experiences editor
translating - build up new functions - mfile2sci

19. Summary
speed
graphics
signal processing

20. Is Scilab an alternative to Matlab?

21. In my opinion: Scilab is capable and can be an alternative to Matlab.